


Between the devil and the deep blue sea

by persuna



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, M/M, ridiculous made up spy stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-09 00:38:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16439789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persuna/pseuds/persuna
Summary: The door shut with a definitive click. It was a satisfying noise, a solid line drawn under a clearly delineated encounter. Something simple and straight-forward and good. Or at least, something physically satisfying. Putting any kind of moral slant on an anonymous sexual encounter was a bit of a stretch, despite the transgressive thrill that honesty gained when you were in Tommy's line of work.





	Between the devil and the deep blue sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justlikesomuch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikesomuch/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Tell Me Everything](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15735390) by [justlikesomuch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikesomuch/pseuds/justlikesomuch). 



> As ever, keep this secret, keep it safe.

The door shut with a definitive click. It was a satisfying noise, a solid line drawn under a clearly delineated encounter. Something simple and straight-forward and good. Or at least, something physically satisfying. Putting any kind of moral slant on an anonymous sexual encounter was a bit of a stretch, despite the transgressive thrill that honesty gained when you were in Tommy's line of work. For a brief time, in the bar and the hotel room and now standing alone in a dimly-lit, beige corridor, there had been no pretenses, no unspoken alliances and conspiracies and no thick band of tension pulling tight across Tommy's shoulders. Nothing but the freedom of barely being known at all.

Tommy felt good, almost giddy. The march of identical doors as he walked down the corridor was practically meditative. The glow of the elevator button when he pressed it was warm and friendly. He was even happy to feel the deepening thrum of exhaustion under the high of sex endorphins still bearing him aloft. For thirty glorious hours his only commitment was to the sweet embrace of sleep and the last third of the book his cover had been reading, a book about whales so unexpectedly interesting that he'd nearly missed their target heading to the drop. Hanna had had to kick him.

All he had to do to achieve the remarkable feat of eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, maybe even ten or twelve, was keep himself in this pleasantly relaxed state of mind and make it home before the inevitable crash came. All he had to do was not get needled out if it by real-world distractions, like the piercing ring of the phone in the room behind him—they're clearly not in buddy, give it up—and the fact that the elevator did not seem to be budging from its position two floors above him. He pressed the button, apparently less of a friend than he'd thought, again, more firmly. Nothing.

Tommy’s own phone buzzed in his pocket. He contemplated, he truly contemplated, not looking at it. But duty called. Duty always fucking called. Or sometimes, it texted.

 _Answer the phone_ said the blocked number, before the message vanished abruptly.

Despite the directive, his cell phone did not ring. The phone in the room behind him, however, continued to trill, its tenor somehow growing more shrill and urgent. Instinctively, Tommy turned towards the sound, just in time to see the tiny light on the door lock flick to green, as if at the behest of a phantom key card.

This crazy shit would fucking happen when he didn’t even have his weapon with him and had been in nearly as many countries as he’d had hours of sleep this week, Jesus. Angling himself so that his head and body were mostly behind the wall, Tommy opened the door, waited a few seconds for any explosions or projectiles to spend themselves, and peered in.

The room appeared to be empty. Tommy cleared the en-suite, the closet and, because when you’d been caught out this way once you never forgot, under the bed. With no clues as to what was going on in any of those places, he finally attended to the telephone's assertive cry. He picked the receiver up and held it an inch or two from his face, but didn't speak, waiting for the person on the other end to make the first move. If he had any cards left, he may as well keep them close to his chest.

“Comrade,” said a shockingly inauthentic Russian accent, “this is your new handler, fresh from Kremlin. Report.”

Tommy clunked the phone against his forehead, somehow finding the strength not to smash it right back down. He was such a fucking show off.

“Are you spying on me, Lovett?” He tried not to sound as betrayed as he felt, even though he felt like he'd taken a kick to the stomach. Maybe that wasn't fair. At some point, an inability to anticipate the boundaries he could reasonably expect from his colleagues became his failing.

“Interesting question,” replied Lovett, dropping the accent, but not the attitude. “I might ask you the same thing.”

“You…” Tommy trailed off, too exhausted and too wrong-footed to suss this cryptic statement out, “...why would you do that?” If Lovett didn't like what he found creeping around in the small portion of Tommy's life that was semi-private, that was his fucking problem. And kind of hypocritical, in this instance.

“You really don’t know?”

"Do I sound like I know what you're talking about?"

"Don't bullshit me with vague non-answers Vietor, answer the question." Lovett, Tommy realized abruptly, was actually upset, his voice worn as thin as Tommy felt.

“No," admitted Tommy, rare directness emerging, almost against his will, in the face of Lovett's distress. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.”

“Okay. Okay.” Lovett took a couple of deep breaths, which only served to ratchet up Tommy's anxiety. What could have thrown Lovett—who had been the fast but steady voice coaching Tommy out of multiple situations where highly trained people were gunning specifically to shoot him in the head—this much? “I’m not surveilling _you_ , you idiot, I’m tracking Tasarov’s nephew, freshly arrived on our shores with a very convincing American passport. He's staying at the Hyatt”.

“Yeah?” He kept his voice steady, but a small, heavy ball of horror was forming at the bottom of his chest. Lovett couldn't mean-

“Imagine my surprise at the identity of his most recent guest.”

Even though he'd been braced for it, that was a cannonball plummeting straight down through his stomach. “Fuck.”

“I thought maybe we were doing honey traps now-”

 _Fuck fuck fuck_. A cascading vision of the consequences that this incredible fuck up could lead to was unfolding in Tommy's head.

"-but there's no record of any such mission being authorized. Are you going off book?"

"I. I thought he was some guy." He'd said he was in finance. Like Tommy had said he was in media. Two vague fucking made-up sounding careers. He should have _known_.

"Yeah, he's green, but he seems to be well trained. Very forgettable midwestern accent, according to airport security. Attractive too, if you're into dumb-faced jocks on mysterious, nefarious missions. I thought you liked brunettes?"

"I like all kinds of people," said Tommy, distracted. His brain was running in panicked circles, unable to engage with the problem. How the fuck could he have missed this?

"Do you think he was targeting you?”

"I don't. We didn't really talk much."

"I know," said Lovett. They both paused, stumbling over the awkward moment, before Lovett plowed on. "Could he have planted anything on you?"

“I don’t think so.” Normally Tommy would have said a confident no, but normally Tommy hadn’t recently hooked up with a Russian agent, like some kind of spy movie cliché. "I didn't feel him plant anything on me, or eat or drink anything with him that I didn’t order or that left my sight. But who knows. We got close, and I’m clearly not on my fucking game." He had to get ahead of this. Somehow. "I can be there in-"

"Tommy. You can’t come back in." He said it as if it was obvious. As if coming back in wasn’t most of Tommy’s life. Quietly, Tommy tried to absorb it, another hard hit. "Tasarov is a big fish, white whale big-"

"Whales are mammals, not fish," corrected Tommy automatically.

“Everyone knows that. That's not an impressive fact, and you’re not even correcting me, it's two separate idioms, as well as being _completely beside the point.”_

“It’s more like a mixed metaphor, which-"

"Would you fucking listen to me?" Lovett broke in, voice raised more than it should be, if he was at the office.

“Keep it down,” said Tommy, firmly. Lovett had to be more careful. People were used to a certain level of ranting coming from his workspace, a habit Tommy had long suspected was at least as much design as it was natural inclination, a useful smokescreen for a situation such as this, but that didn't mean they weren't listening.

"There are already rumors he's got a mole in the agency,” Lovett hissed, in a grudging, still conspicuous whisper. “When they see this, they're going to ask questions, and not in a way that you'll enjoy." Tommy stayed silent, trying to play it out in his head. Trying to configure an outcome that might contradict Lovett.

"You know this," Lovett said after a few moments, gentler now, but still insistent. Fuck. Lovett only got gentle when he deemed a situation truly dire, or he was talking to children and small animals.

"If I can explain to Dan-" started Tommy.

"This is over Dan's head. It's not even his case. I’m slow walking the report, but I don't think I can stop it altogether.” Lovett took a deep breath and let it out, a burst of static in Tommy’s ear. “I’m sorry."

"No don't, don't be silly." The knowledge that Lovett was right was settling on him like a heavy, stifling blanket and if that was the case, there was nothing he could do. This was fucked up enough without dragging Lovett down too. If he hadn't already.

"Can you get to somewhere safe? We need to make a plan. And for you not to get disappeared today." Lovett was slipping back into his mission voice, not exactly calm, but focused and collected.

"I know a place." With the hope of an amicable resolution snuffed out, logic and the deadening calm of his training were at last kicking in. Tommy was the one who had screwed up here. He should probably draw the line for Lovett at the light treason he’d so far engaged in. "Thank you, Jon."

"Where-" Lovett started to say, but Tommy hung up on him before he could finish the sentence. The phone rang again, more aggressively than ever, but Tommy was already moving, out in the hallway and at the stairwell door he'd subconsciously noted, even before he known it would be needed.

Now he knew that someone was watching, Tommy knew how to vanish.

\----

It was closer to morning than night by the time Tommy made it to his safe house, a nondescript, shabby apartment—if two rooms with a bathroom small enough that taking a shower drenched the toilet could be called an apartment—in a seedy block where no one moved quickly to fix it when the few security cameras around failed, and the landlord gave you a discount for cash rent. He was beyond exhausted, clad in an ill-fitting array of stolen clothes he'd cobbled together in the hotel basement, but fairly sure he had not been followed and that any trackers that may have been planted on him had been ditched.

Under the bed there was a black duffel bag, a classic for a man on the lam, Lovett probably would have said if he'd been there. Squirrelled away throughout the apartment: a few thousand dollars in cash, non-sequential, never tagged for an op; an old identity he'd salvaged from a previous cover, obscure enough to get him over the border, if he moved quickly and Lovett gave him a day's head start; a new burner phone, replacing the one he'd crushed in the hotel basement; his backup backup firearm and a scant amount of ammo, he'd have to pick up more before he got too far; some clothes, a little too like tactical gear to work long term, but good enough for whatever bus or train or dodgy car dealer he ended up with. A bus or train would let him sleep, but a car would be more flexible. He'd need to factor in the risk of an hour's nap if he went with the car though, as unsteady as he felt. Though getting caught by highway patrol would be a fittingly ignominious end to this mess. He’d be a cautionary tale for new recruits for generations: keep your dick in your pants and don’t get sloppy, or you too could end up being marched to a black site by a traffic cop. You’re never too good to fail. 

The pile of necessities on the bed was finally taking shape when the tumbler in his front door lock turned over. Tommy reached for the gun, checked the chamber—he always cleared it, but he clearly couldn't trust himself anymore— then loaded it, all of it an unavoidable, distinctive noise that the person on the other side of the door had no doubt heard. He aimed the gun at the door. They'd both be ready.

The door swung open. Tommy lowered his weapon.

"You're not here to take me in, are you?" He kept his tone light, but it was a struggle. There were few constants in this life, and fewer things still that were reliably good. Favs was one of them, from the very first day of their induction, the wide-eyed FBI transfer that Tommy, an of course much tougher and not at all naive Air Force recruit, hadn’t thought would last a month. 

If he was here to take Tommy in, he wasn't sure he had it in him to fight him.

"No, you asshole. Lovett sent me to make sure you didn't do anything stupid, like flee to Mexico." Knees shaky with relief, or shock, or exhaustion—he had his pick of excuses today—Tommy sat down on the bed. Favs eyed the pile of incriminating items next to him with disapproval. "Which was apparently right on the money."

"How did you know I was here?"

"Pro tip: if you want to disappear, don't come to a place you've already taken your old partner to."

He had a point there. Was this another fuck up, or had Tommy wanted to leave the door open for someone to catch up with him? "I was hoping you didn't remember."

"I was concussed, not dead."

"Right." Somewhere between the two is more how Tommy remembered it, though he tried not to. That had been another bad day.

He stared at the wall opposite, yellow with age, flecked with mildew. A palace compared to where he might end up if things went even half-way wrong. Where Favs and Lovett might too, more likely the more they helped him. He wished for a divine bolt of inspiration to tell him what to choose, fight or flight, but nothing came. His brain was syrupy with exhaustion, barely even fit for basic logic. How was he supposed to make the right call?

The bed creaked unhappily as Favs sat down next to him. He clapped a hand on Tommy's knee, warm and wide and reliable. "We can clear this up. We just need to be careful about how we do it." His face, when Tommy turned to look at him, was reassuringly calm. "Trust me."

Finally, something Tommy could do.

\----

One side effect of having spent so many hours with Lovett's voice in his ear, with his vast array of digital eyes surveilling Tommy from more directions than he could conceive of, was persistently imagining Lovett's presence. Even on the rare occasions Tommy was off the grid—earbud out, going about his non-work related business—he would find himself conjuring up Lovett's voice, offering wry, deflating commentary on his choices. Maybe that was why it wasn't strange to wake up from the deep hole of post-mission exhaustion to the sound of his voice and the gentle clicking of a keyboard.

For a few moments, Tommy hovered on the edge of rolling over and going back to sleep. But he could taste, somewhere close, an amorphous, dreadful catastrophe, and the instant he glanced at it it coalesced back into the full knowledge of how fucked he was. He sat up, forcing sleep away.

"You wake up like Nosferatu," said Lovett, who was sitting cross-legged on the narrow kitchen counter like some kind of surreal techno gargoyle, his computer balanced precariously on his knees. Tommy blinked at him. Lovett glowered. "You don't have anywhere else for me to sit," he said, "you're a terrible host".

Favs was still there, sitting in the apartment's lone chair, eyes fixed on a tablet.

Ignoring them both, Tommy lurched over to the sink to down a glass of water and splash some more on his face. "How long was I asleep?"

"Barely six hours," said Favs.

"Six?" Tommy had not been prepared to deduct that much from the countdown clock in his head. The window of opportunity for him to leave was closing. He'd lost those vital hours where the worlds of the extremely late and the obscenely early overlapped, when a wealth of things could be hidden in the discrepancies between them.

"Relax," soothed Favs, "the whole system is on the fritz. E-mails, remote drive access, comm links. No one knows what's going on."

He didn't look at Lovett as he said it, and Lovett didn't look up from his laptop when he said, "there's a few system-wide glitches. By a lucky coincidence, everything truly vital still seems to be holding together, but no one is questioning a few missing reports. For now.”

It was either the luckiest or the most thoughtful cyber attack of all time, and it was probably best for all of them that no one know for sure. If there was a lump in Tommy's throat, he could put it down to exhaustion and treason induced vulnerability.

“I’ve been reading up on Tasarov,” said Favs, passing the tablet to Tommy so he could scroll through the files. There was Tasarov’s craggy, evil face, and there underneath was Alexai, as he was apparently called. He was still clearly recognisable as Tommy’s hookup, even under a more Eastern European haircut. “Bad fucking news, not that I need to tell you that. High up in SVR, higher still in organized crime, fingers and god knows what else in pies all over the world. But there’s nothing on the nephew. He doesn’t seem to have been active anywhere.”

“He hasn’t, as far as we know. It looked like he was keeping out of the family business until he arrived here last week. Now management are worried they’ve been keeping him clean for something big,” said Lovett, “and they don't want the Russians to know that we even know he exists until they have some clue what he’s here for. They're keeping the circle who know about him as small as possible.”

“You said there are rumors of a mole?” asked Tommy.

“There are always rumors of a mole,” interjected Favs. “The natural consequences of a group of professionally paranoid people who don’t get out much all keeping secrets from each other.”

“I marvel every day at your success in this industry,” said Lovett, “but yes, there are rumors that the powerful international forces of other professionally paranoid people constantly trying to get at our secrets have been successful—” Favs rolled his eyes “—and much as you might wish to rise above it, whether or not they have isn’t going to change how suspicious it looks for Tommy to be canoodling with Tasarov Junior.”

Tommy should have packed up his duffel bag and slept on the bus to Texas, if only to escape this deeply humiliating discussion of his sex life. “I am so completely fucked,” he said. Lovett raised an eyebrow at him, and Tommy felt the start of a blush prickling up his chest. “Metaphorically speaking,” he added. Which made it worse.

“It doesn't help that you've always presented yourself as straight.” Lovett’s voice was cool, detached. “It makes it look like you think you’ve got something to be ashamed of. Or like there's a whole other Tommy Vietor you've been keeping hidden.” Which could be a neutral observation on the current state of affairs, but felt distinctly like a dig. Before Tommy could respond, Lovett cut his eyes away and changed the subject. “We need leverage. Something that you can offer that will give you a chance to explain.”

“Now you _want_ me to explain?” asked Tommy testily.

“By ‘explain’ I mean whatever lie we come up with. Being too incompetent to spot a Russian spy in his first week at work is almost as bad as being a sexually repressed sleeper agent.” Okay, that was definitely a dig.

“How did you leave it?” asked Favs. If he was mad at Tommy for fucking up so bad, he was doing a very good job at hiding it. “Maybe we can cultivate him as an asset for real?”

Tommy tried to think of a way to describe how picking up possibly closeted men in hotel bars for semi-anonymous sex typically worked without Favs’ big, romantic eyes turning wounded on his behalf. He settled on, “we left it on good terms, but we didn't forge a deep emotional connection".

“But you could see him again, without it seeming weird?”

It wasn’t crazy, Tommy supposed. “Probably, yeah, if he hasn't moved hotel.” He could spin their encounter being good enough for a repeat performance, as long as he made it clear it was still casual. “Are you thinking we could get ears on him? Create a window into whatever they’re doing?”

“If we could," Favs said, “we could spin you being there as a rogue mission. Management might be grateful enough not to ask as many questions.”

“Sure,” said Lovett, “but how? We need to move fast, and the Russians don’t. It could be weeks until anything happens, or he could be on the move any day now. We’d need to plant something that would stay with him for a while—dropping a bug into his pocket isn’t going to mean anything when he changes his jacket—and that’s before we get into their inevitable countermeasures.”

“We've done that kind of thing before,” said Tommy.

“Yeah, but usually with a willing participant, or more recon. What can you as some random one-hour stand give him that he's likely to carry over several days and that's also substantial enough for something bleeding-edge to be built in, so they don’t pick it up in the first routine bug check? It would have to be at least as big as a fancy pen.”

Tommy racked his brain for any hint of information he might have picked up about Alexai's habits or non-sexual proclivities. “What about a watch?”

“Do you always give your hookups extravagant gifts?”

In deference to the selfless help Lovett was rendering him, Tommy didn’t roll his eyes. “I’m not talking about giving him a watch. I know the make of his current watch.” Tommy pulled out his phone and tapped in the name of the watch company. He got the number of vowels wrong the first time, but thankfully google knew what he was talking about.

"Are watch brands pre, post or mid coital conversation for you WASP types?” asked Lovett. Tommy ignored him. It was pre-coital, an excuse to wrap a hand around another man's wrist when you weren't quite sure yet, but he suspected Lovett's question was rhetorical.

"If I can remember what model it is we can buy one, plant the tech in it, and I can swap it out, no problem.” He flicked through the list of watches, praying it wasn't some old model that was out of production. "Here!"

Finally out of queries and objections, Lovett made grabby hands at Tommy's phone until he handed it over, and started typing things into his laptop.

"It's big enough..." he said. Tommy drifted over to stand by Lovett's shoulders. As usual, he could barely make heads or tails of what was flashing across the screen. Favs, on Lovett's other side, caught his eye and smiled the baffled, affectionate smile they exchanged in honor of Lovett in his element.

“Jon, you need to go back to the office and get these items." Favs' phone vibrated in his hand. "I'd go, but I'm meant to be uncontactable and offshore."

"Should we be using company supplies?" asked Tommy.

"I don't keep tens of thousands of dollars in tech lying around speculatively," replied Lovett, "so we don't have much choice.”

"And if we're going to make this look legit, it might actually help that we went in-house," added Favs. "What about the watch?"

"The watch is in stock in a few places. I can pick a couple up and be back in-" Lovett started to hop down off the counter, but Favs put a hand up to stop him.

"Didn't you say you're meant to be off-shore?"

"Yes, but-"

"And are we or are we not trying to fly under one of the world's most sophisticated radars?"

"Yeah". He glanced sideways at Tommy.

"So?"

"So I'll stay here," said Lovett glumly.

"Great. You two relax, I’ll do all the work, and we’ll meet here again by 1700 hours."

\----

Several hours in a small, claustrophobic room did not improve Tommy's mood. He lay on his back on the bed and indulged in some self-flagellation. How had this happened? What did it say about him that of all the people in this city, he’d been drawn to the biggest lie of them all? A person who didn’t even really exist. Another mask. Maybe it was to be expected: like called to like. He thought he’d found an escape, albeit a fleeting, shallow one, but it had been nothing but a mirror, Narcissus taking solace in a soulless likeness of himself and careening, vain and foolish, to his own destruction.

Ugh, bad judgment, and he was a pompous ass. Since introspecting his way to an understanding of how and why he continually fucked himself over wasn't going well, Tommy turned his focus to the myriad of less existential questions queuing up to plague him. Like what the fuck were they going to do, and why exactly was Lovett angry at him?

"Are we sure that this wasn't a set up for me?"

"I can't see Tasarov using his own nephew in a gay honey-trap, en route to more important business. You're not that important, and his organization is famously homophobic." Lovett hadn't looked at Tommy since they'd been left alone. As soon as Favs had gone he’d slipped into Tommy's only chair and fixed his eyes on his screen, shoulders curled defensively inward. It was a clear message that, for once, he wanted to be ignored. And yet, as ever, his presence filled the room. And not only because he had one leg tucked under him and the other stretched out diagonally across the small space so that his toes touched the edge of Tommy’s bed.

Tommy sat up and prepared himself to engage directly. Perhaps it was naive of him, but amongst the array of difficult tasks facing him today, decoding Lovett for once seemed like one of the more achievable ones.

"You know I’m not with them, right?"

Lovett huffed dismissively. "Of course you’re not a spy." Tommy opened his mouth to remind Lovett what they did for a living, the kind of good-natured teasing their dynamic was built on, but Lovett didn't give him a chance. "Or not a double spy. Whatever."

"Then why are you pissed at me?" Tommy knew he'd forced Lovett to help clean up his mess, but he also knew that if Lovett resented helping him out he would have been making him pay in real time by bitching heavily about every keystroke he exerted on Tommy's behalf.

"Does Hanna know?" asked Lovett, which seemed like a non-sequitur. It made some sense that he might be mistakenly angry on Hanna's behalf, but not that he'd be stewing silently over it. ”About your…” he flapped a hand in the air, “dalliances."

"Our covers are married, not us," Tommy replied. It didn't seem like the moment to comment on the endearing streak of Victorian prudery that sometimes caused Lovett to use words like 'dalliance'. "And anyway, we have an understanding."

"That you fuck around?" And there was Lovett's less prissy side. Tommy tried not to bristle too obviously.

"That when we're together we're together, and when we're not together we're not together, and that even when we are together, that doesn't give either of us rights over the other one. Is that detailed enough for you?"

"Yes. Great. Thanks for clarifying," said Lovett, in tones devoid of agreement or gratitude. He shut his mouth firmly, with the air of someone who'd said all he had to say, but he was also biting the inside of his cheek like someone making a physical effort to hold his words in, so Tommy waited.

Lovett didn’t hold out for long. He snapped his computer shut, flung it onto the bed, and gave up the pretense they weren't on the verge of having a fight.

"In this den of fucking vipers, I thought we were," Lovett's voice wavered, unexpectedly more in sadness than anger, and it tugged at Tommy's chest like there was a direct line tying them together, "I don't know, two snakes who were friends. I thought we trusted each other."

"I do trust you,” Tommy said. He scooted forward, as if being closer might help him transmit all the sincerity he felt directly into Lovett’s brain. Lovett's eyes were glossy and hurt, and that was not to be borne. "I do. You tell me to duck, I duck. You tell me to jump out of the second window on the left, I jump."

"That’s work," said Lovett dismissively.

"Says the person in the van. When you’re free falling into a dumpster it feels pretty important."

"Don't pander," said Lovett, but he did seem slightly mollified by the reference to one of his finest hours. Somehow managing to check local business records and CCTV to confirm the dumpster had been entirely filled with polystyrene and those tiny plastic bags of air, not anything pointier and more deadly, while also using the warehouse’s blueprints to help Tommy evade several gun-wielding mercenaries had been a particularly brilliant bit of mission support and, according to Lovett, only a very low risk gamble with Tommy's life.

"That's the worst advice you've ever given me, and I don’t think you even want me to follow it,” said Tommy, and Lovett acknowledged the point by lifting the corner of his mouth in what was almost a smile, and definitely an improvement.

"You could have told me. That you're bi." Lovett was no longer heated, but he still sounded sad, which was just as bad in all the ways that counted. "I wouldn't have judged you, or put it in your file, or hit on you, or whatever childish thing you think I would have done.” He swallowed. Tommy tracked the movement of this throat, his own chest aching, and lifted his gaze with difficulty when Lovett spoke again. “It would have been nice not to be alone.”

Even though it had to be, Lovett had never so much as hinted that being one of the few openly out people in the company could be lonely before. They didn't usually touch that much, but Tommy found himself putting a hand on Lovett's knee. What he was trying to do he didn't exactly know, ground them both maybe, or connect them, or soothe at least one of them. They didn’t do this, but it was surprisingly easy to reach out. In the small space, he barely had to move to do it. "I didn’t think that you’d do any of those things, not ever. I wasn't not telling you. I just... hadn't told you."

He stared at Lovett, willing him to understand something he didn’t even fully grasp himself, but Lovett was looking anywhere but at him. 

"And why should you?" said Lovett bracingly, unexpectedly starting to close whatever window into vulnerability had opened between them, right as Tommy most wanted to look through it. "You don't owe anyone—even or especially me, take your pick—an explanation about your sexuality. That's solidarity 101. I don’t even know why I’m making so much fuss. It must be the leftover straight vibes you misappropriated throwing me off.”

He started to swing his leg up under him, away from Tommy's hand, but Tommy spread his fingers wider and didn't let go. If Lovett was conceding a point, things still weren't right between them.

"It's not you. It's habit. It's the military, it's professional compartmentalization and-" 

And maybe Lovett wasn't entirely wrong about there being a little bit of shame and self-protection. Tommy was only brave in some of the ways he wanted to be. But fear of sidelong looks from his more conservative colleagues was only one of the things that had been holding him back. Acknowledging being bi—to Lovett, to other agents, to anyone who wasn’t a stranger that didn’t know his real name—brought him one step closer to acknowledging what the strange, tender feeling in his chest was. It wasn’t shame, or guilt. 

Lovett was looking at the floor, deflated in a way that looked unnatural on him. Fuck it. Even if Tommy wasn’t ready to name whatever this feeling was, one of the barriers holding him back had still crumbled, and they might all get put in a hole tomorrow. If ever there had been a time to jump, and hope that Lovett could catch him, this was it. 

“-and maybe I wouldn't mind. Owing you something."

That made Lovett look him in the eye, all astonishment. Tommy wavered, but didn't take it back.

"I'm listening," Lovett said, leaning in towards Tommy. He was aware all over again of how close they were, how close they had to be in the tiny room; the scant space they'd managed to maintain between them seemed forced and artificial. Tommy consciously gentled the hand on Lovett's knee, giving him room to move away if he wanted to.

"Were you listening yesterday?" he asked, knowing the answer. Lovett flushed, ever so slightly, subtle enough that Tommy might not have noticed if Lovett hadn’t still been tilted towards him, face slightly upturned. He shifted his leg so that Tommy’s fingers grazed higher up his thigh. Hope started to blossom into anticipation.

"I couldn't get ears on him. They changed rooms at the last minute."

"That doesn't sound like much of an impasse," said Tommy. "Not for you."

"I may have hacked your phone,” admitted Lovett. “When I saw your stupid upright shoulders on the security footage.”

"And did you like what you heard?"

"You left it in your pocket. The audio quality was terrible."

"Lovett." He could never make anything easy, but Tommy apparently liked that.

"I thought you might be a traitor, so it was an emotionally complex listening experience."

"What were we doing when you tuned in?" Tommy asked, trying to get them back on track. Lovett's eyes flickered down to Tommy's mouth.

"Kissing."

Heart beating hard, Tommy leaned over the last few inches of space between them and kissed him. He kept it gentle, the next stage in the dialogue between them, but he still felt the power of it, a shivery wave of sensation washing across his skin at the contact, lips to scalp to toes. Lovett wasted no time in escalating, opening his mouth under Tommy’s and reaching a hand round to the back of Tommy’s neck, fingers stroking at his nape. It tingled across his back and shoulders, like Lovett’s touch was electric.

His hands dropped to Lovett’s hips without him consciously deciding, at the mercy of a primal need to pull him closer, to connect them. He worried that it was too much—they’d been fighting a moment ago, it was a bad time, they were in the middle of a _crisis_ —but Lovett was more than on board. At the first suggestion of a tug closer he was scrambling over, arms looping around Tommy’s neck, legs wrapping around his waist, weight settling deliciously into his lap, every warm, squirming inch of him suddenly, dizzyingly in reach. Tommy hadn’t felt this desperate since he was a teenager, too intent on satiating his desire to even formulate a plan of action. They kissed, and kissed, and kissed, and then Lovett broke away, and leaned his lips in close to Tommy’s ear.

“What did you do next?” he whispered, a shivery echo of how his voice had guided Tommy through so much: his worst, his most triumphant, his most adrenaline-filled moments. He’d been a lifeline so many times, but he was usually far away, nothing but a voice in Tommy’s ear. Now here he was, under Tommy’s hands, his breath damp and ticklish on Tommy’s ear. This was so much better.

“Tommy?” Lovett asked, a note of worry entering his voice. He was trying to carry on with their bit, and Tommy was staring at him instead of answering. He groped about for the thread of their previous conversation. Lovett was asking about Tasarov’s nephew.

“Fuck him,” said Tommy. He could barely remember anyway, the details of that sexual encounter rendered cold and perfunctory in comparison to this. And they hadn’t even taken their clothes off yet. “Let’s focus on what I want to do to you.”

He manhandled a willing Lovett down onto his back and settled a knee either side of his thighs. The bed creaked and dipped alarmingly, but held. Tommy knelt there, taking the sight of Lovett in, flushed and rumpled and waiting for him. Not waiting too patiently, either.

“I heard some big talk about what you wanted to do to me,” Lovett said, reaching up to pull on Tommy’s shirt. “If you're not going to get on with it, at least take this off so I have something good to look at while you dawdle.” Tommy obliged. “Ugh,” Lovett said, with great satisfaction. “No wonder you’re so good at scaling walls and knocking people unconscious with a single blow.”

“You too,” Tommy said when Lovett made no move to undress reciprocally. He huffed but complied, tossing his shirt aside, crossing his arms over his chest, and then uncrossing them to tug Tommy down on top of him. Tommy wasn’t done looking at Lovett, not by a long shot, but he let himself be pulled down for several long, drugging kisses. Impossibly, it was even better now, more of their skin pressed together and all of Lovett safely contained under his body. It was all so, so good.

There were so many other good things they could do, unfurling in Tommy’s mind in startling detail, as if a part of him had been planning this without his knowledge. If they were going to get to them, someone would have to take charge. Tommy was ready to step up. More than anything, he wanted to see Lovett fall apart, and know it was because of him. He lifted himself up slightly, resisting with difficulty when Lovett tried to pull him back down for more kisses. He was on a mission.

Tommy worked his way down Lovett’s body, enjoying the sights along the way. The dark hair on his chest, surprisingly soft when he rubbed his cheek on it. His small, tight nipples. They were sensitive, judging by the way Lovett squirmed when Tommy put his mouth on one of them, rubbed the flat of his tongue over it in a passing caress. His belly, soft and tender. Tommy could have lingered there, if he hadn't had places to be. For now, he settled for a gentle, affectionate nip of his teeth, just to say hello. He’d be back, if he was allowed. 

“What are you doing?” whined Lovett.

Tommy caught his eyes, smiled up the length of Lovett’s body. He was bent over Lovett's hips now, both hands on the waistband of his unprofessional, but hopefully easy to remove sweatpants. “Do you really need me to answer that?”

Lovett must not have had a comeback. He covered his eyes with his arm, like the sight of Tommy was too much for him, and let out a frustrated groan. But he also lifted his hips so that Tommy could peel the sweatpants down, as simple a matter as Tommy had hoped, which was its own kind of answer.

Lovett's boxer briefs did nothing to hide how into this he was. Momentarily, Tommy let himself press his face against the bulge of Lovett’s erection, breathe in the hot, intimate musk of him. But it wasn’t quite time for that. He slid lower, hands running down Lovett’s thighs, pushing them apart slightly so he could nuzzle inside, where the skin was softest and smoothest and hottest. Lovett’s breath hitched, and his hands went down to Tommy’s shoulders, not to push or pull, but like he might fly away if he didn’t hold on. Tommy opened his mouth against the inside of Lovett’s thigh, nudging the edge of his boxers up with his nose, and sucked hard enough to leave a mark. Lovett’s whole body jerked. It was intriguing, but Tommy couldn’t stay. He still had calves to get to know.

“Oh come on,” Lovett gasped when Tommy moved lower.

“Hmmm?” Tommy cupped a hand round the back of Lovett’s calf, where the muscle was round and strong, but still slender enough to fit in his hand.

“Would you-” Lovett started to say, but he cut himself off. Tommy waited, dragging his hands down to Lovett’s ankles. They were narrow and fragile, thin skin over bone, flexing in his grip as Lovett wriggled with frustration. He had hopes of getting Lovett to admit what he wanted out loud, with no smokescreen of sarcasm or self-deprecation. Maybe Lovett would even tell him what to do, command Tommy as thoughtlessly as he did on a mission. Tommy shivered in anticipation. Not that he wasn’t having a good time, but he was starting to hope it wouldn’t take much longer. His mouth was watering to get down to business.

“Would you get your fucking mouth on me?” Lovett burst out eventually, when Tommy started in on his toes. 

“All you had to do was ask.” Tommy smirked at him, sliding back up to Lovett’s hips. 

“God you’re the worst,” Lovett said as Tommy curled his fingers over the waistband of Lovett’s underwear, “fucking tell me if that’s what you’re waiting for, I’m not-” his voice died away as Tommy peeled his boxers off and finally opened his lips around Lovett’s cock. He was hot in Tommy’s mouth, skin smooth and delicate. Lovett was delicate all over. You wouldn't think it. That was a secret not many people got to know.

“Oh, that’s nice,” sighed Lovett, and immediately looked slightly regretful about his word choice. Tommy would give him fucking nice. He sucked on the head of Lovett's cock a few times, getting a rhythm going, letting his mouth get wet and used to the stretch and taste of it, and then started trying to work more of Lovett in. He hadn’t done this in a while.

Despite that, he didn’t seem to be doing too badly. Lovett had his hand in Tommy’s hair, fingers scritching at his scalp, and he wasn’t saying anything as banal as “nice” anymore, a string of increasingly incoherent encouragements flowing his mouth. He thrust up into Tommy’s mouth, a small abortive movement, like he wanted to stop himself but couldn’t. Tommy spread his hands wide on Lovett’s hips; it was easy to hold him down.

Because of the angle they were at, both of them mostly horizontal, Lovett’s head flung back onto the bed’s flat pillow, Tommy couldn’t see Lovett’s face that clearly. He could hear him though, hear as his words dissolved and floated away from him. Lovett was making noises on every hard suck, hurt, shocked little moans that he definitely wouldn’t have let out if he was still in full control. Tommy drank them in, used them. He’d spent years tuned into Lovett’s voice, following directions he gave him faster than they could be processed into thought, and even though he’d never heard him quite like this before, it still felt like a hand on his neck, guiding him firmly onwards. 

Tommy’s mouth was growing numb under the stretch of it, his jaw aching, but it was good, addictive, like the thrill of pushing to his limits on a mission, going past them, and still succeeding. He felt hungry for it, for the sounds Lovett was making, for his pleasure, all Tommy’s doing. All his for the taking. Light-headed, he pulled off enough to take a few deep breaths, quick, and went eagerly back down, taking Lovett’s cock as deep as he could and swallowing once, twice. Lovett shook right apart with a shuddering, silent gasp and two hands tugging desperately at Tommy’s hair. Tommy stayed as long as Lovett was pulling him closer, and pulled off when Lovett started pushing him away.

It was the same feeling of satisfaction, of a job well done, that he got after a successful mission. But better because it wasn’t in service of some distant, shades-of-gray good. It was Lovett. Basking in it, Tommy rested his head on Lovett’s thigh, both of them stunned and panting. 

Tommy was still hard, and the awareness of it became more intrusive as he got his breath back. He shoved his hand into his pants, finally getting a hand around his dick with a grateful groan. Even if Lovett was out of commission, there was more than enough to work with, Lovett spread out before him, wrecked because of him, Tommy’s mouth still aching from-

“Come here, come up here,” Lovett demanded, hauling at Tommy’s shoulders, and Tommy went, following Lovett’s directions on autopilot. “Off, get these off,” he said, encountering Tommy jeans. Together, both uncoordinated, they fumbled and wrestled the rest of his clothes off.

“You think you’re the only one with things to work out?” Lovett asked, going straight for Tommy’s dick as soon as it was in reach. Tommy was in an awkward position, halfway to lying down, hovering mostly over Lovett on his elbows and knees. He felt oddly helpless, his weight on his arms so he couldn’t move them with pulling away, which he really didn’t want to do. Which might be dangerous with how firm Lovett’s grip on him was. Lovett didn’t give him a chance to adjust. His pace was even more punishing than Tommy’s had been. 

“You think you’re the only one paying attention, hanging for hours on every gasp and gunshot and your inadequate fucking narration of what’s going on? Watching you and tracking you and never being able to touch you, even when you need it?” And he was reading Tommy, head tipped back to watch his face intently, picking up what felt good with characteristic quickness. Lovett was sliding his palm hard over the head of Tommy dick at the end of every stroke, somehow exactly how he liked it, until it was too good, too much. In an embarrassingly short amount of time Tommy was gasping and coming, curling over Lovett’s chest, arms trembling, trying not to crush him, until finally Lovett let go, and Tommy could collapse next to him and bury his face in Lovett’s shoulder, shaken to his core.

\----

“You two look cozy,” said Favs, which they did. There were only so many non-cozy ways two fully grown people could share a twin bed, even if they were fully clothed, and Tommy wasn’t keen to explore any of them. He’d managed, in the heat of the moment, to come close to forgetting that this might be some kind of tragic first and last hurrah before they were both jailed for treason. All the dread and helplessness was liable to come rushing back if he moved away from his snug spot, lying between a sitting Lovett and the wall with his head not quite in Lovett’s lap—that coveted place was reserved for his laptop—but close enough that Lovett’s hand had been absently petting his hair for at least half an hour .

“You did tell us to relax,” Lovett said, but his hand stopped moving. Tommy butted his head against Lovett’s thigh. “You’re like a needy cat,” Lovett said, eyes fake stern and mouth trying hard not to smile, “and you know I’m more of a dog person.”

“I’m glad that you’ve taken my advice, but you might want to put a pin in that and have a look at what I’ve brought back.” Favs lifted a silver Nordstrom bag aloft. “I bought three.”

Lovett was off the bed in a flash, grabbing the bag from Favs’ hand and taking it over to to the kitchen counter.

“Did you get the-” he started to ask, and Favs handed Lovett a bundle from his inside pocket. Lovett extracted a tiny screwdriver and a variety of other things Tommy only half recognized—technology had come such a long way since his hardware primer that his knowledge was basically useless—and started doing… whatever it was he did with such items. Tommy stood and walked over to Favs.

“Did you have any problems?”

“None,” said Favs. “Everyone is very distracted trying to figure out how the world’s pettiest worm got past our firewall. Working theory is a lightly disgruntled ex employee trying to piss us off and show us the flaws in our system. I even got to have a few words with Dan.” That got Tommy’s attention. Dan’s blessing would up their odds of success considerably; his disapproval would be devastating, practically and personally. “We couldn’t exactly talk freely, but if we can pull this off, I think he’s willing to give us cover.”

“Really?”

“His exact words were, ‘if they kept me in the loop on where their backyard was, maybe I wouldn’t have to blunder into it.’ I think he’s as annoyed at management going over his head as he is keen to keep you on the books.”

“Whatever works.”

\----

 

Tommy’s legs itched to bound up the stairs two at a time, but he held them in check and forced himself to take them slowly. Not only would being a few minutes early gain him nothing, it was important that he not arrive looking suspiciously sweaty. As far as he knew, everything was going to schedule. 

Sure enough, by the time he got to the correct floor, legs burning, the signal had not yet come through. Instinctively, his hand went to his ear, where the earbud connecting him to mission control would normally be. Not today. Today, they were on their own. 

Tommy leaned against the stairwell wall and went over the plan in his head one more time.

 

_"How good is your slight of hand?" Favs had asked. "Because taking someone's watch off their wrist and then putting another one back on is extremely tricky. Especially if the two you are alone, with no distractions."_

_It was a reasonable question. Tommy could execute a brush pass with the best of them, but Favs had always had the edge on him in this area. If you wanted to slip a keycard out of someone's pocket so gently that they didn't notice it was gone until their lunch break was over and your team was at the extraction point, he was your man. Tommy maintained that Favs' long, elegant fingers were a biological advantage that he couldn't compete against; Favs insisted that Tommy's face sometimes went unnervingly blank when he was concentrating and that that set people on edge and subconsciously caused them to check their pockets._

_“I won’t have to,” replied Tommy, “he takes his watch off to shower."_

_"He has to," Lovett interjected, “because can you believe it Jon, it's not even waterproof. What self-respecting espionage professional has a watch that isn't waterproof to at least 100 bar? What if he had to scuba dive to a party on an exclusive island? The damn thing doesn't even have a compass in it. A compass!”_

_"And," Tommy continued, "he gets undressed in the bedroom, not the bathroom. At least in my experience”_

_"It's amateur hour over there. Honestly, I'm embarrassed for us that these are our greatest international foes." Lovett shook his head ruefully. "No wonder you didn’t pick up on his secret identity. I would have assumed a higher standard from the Russians as well."_

_"So we have to make sure he has a shower," mused Favs._

 

Tommy's phone vibrated with a text message. _The bear is in his den_ , it read. 

With a deep breath, Tommy slipped out of the hotel stairwell and back into the familiar corridor. He kept close to the wall. The lone camera in this area had been angled to marginally increase its blind spot but, to allay suspicions of tampering, it was still recording.

 

_“I sense you have an idea for that,” said Tommy._

_"Something really wet and messy,” replied Favs. Lovett choked on a cough that sounded suspiciously like laughter._

_“Maybe red wine?" continued Favs, with faux innocence._

_"Full fat coke and whisky," countered Lovett, “it’s stickier, and served in larger volumes.”_

_“I bow to your expertise in soda,” said Favs. “We don't have eyes in his room, obviously, but Lovett's been surveilling the target for days, so we know his routine in public spaces. He's gone down to the hotel bar every evening since he arrived. Tonight, I'll follow him in, order the largest, sugariest drink that they'll serve me, and tip as much of it over him as possible."_

_“Perfect,” said Lovett, “except I should do it.”_

_"What? No." No way was Tommy sending Lovett in to the field with a highly trained Russian operative, especially not when they were flying solo, with no option of a SWAT team in the other room, or a sniper with his crosshairs on their target, watching for any sudden moves. Lovett narrowed his eyes, mouth firming up like he was about to start doubling down on something stupid._

_"Lovett,” said Favs, in more soothing, conciliatory tones than Tommy had managed, “this guy is dangerous. I know he's inexperienced, and so far surprisingly careless, but he definitely knows at least three ways to kill you with the glass of coke you want to spill on him. That’s a conservative estimate.”_

_“Like you say, I’ve been watching him. So I know he's going to that bar to pick up tall, handsome, All-American men in suits.” Lovett looked Favs up and down pointedly. “I'm less memorable, I'm less likely to get hit on by him, and as a non-field agent, I'm less likely to cross paths with him again when we’re inevitably pitted against him in a life and death struggle for the soul of democracy in which he could definitely use this against us.”_

_Hoping that that hadn’t actually made sense, Tommy glanced at Favs. But Favs was nodding slowly._

_“Fine,” Tommy bit out, “but Favs is there as back up.”_

_“I have had combat training you know,” said Lovett, “I’m surprisingly feisty”. Tommy didn’t dignify that with an answer._

_“I don’t care how many people try and pick you up,” he said to Favs, “you don’t let him out of your sight.”_

 

If the target was in the room, that meant that the first stage of the plan had gone well. Despite the fact that the hardest bit was still to go, Tommy felt a certain lightness. Whatever happened, the worst had not come to pass. Lovett and Favs could still get out of this. 

Finally at the door, he traced his hand across the wall. Three foot left and two foot down: the sweet spot.

 

_"How will we know when he's having a shower?"_

_"Well Thomas, have I got the gadget for you. Espionage’s finest minds have worked for decades—nay centuries!—to perfect the art of eavesdropping. Today, we stand on their shoulders."_

_With a flourish, Lovett placed a glass onto the table._

_"Seriously?"_

_Lovett had the temerity to look offended. “Hey, it could be filled with microscopic transistors or something. You don't know."_

_"I literally saw you take that from my sink a few seconds ago. You didn’t even wash it.”_

_"Well, I want you to walk in there feeling confident. Attitude is very important." Lovett pushed the glass across the table towards Tommy._

_Sceptical, Tommy hefted the totally normal, slightly grimy glass in his hand._

_“They work better than you think,” Lovett said, “I’ve looked at the building specs and not only are the walls kind of shoddily made, the plumbing runs right next to the door.”_

 

With his ear pressed to a glass pressed to a particular spot on the wall that Lovett had assured him he chose out of necessity, not because Tommy looked extra silly crouching that way, Tommy felt incredibly exposed. Regardless of Lovett’s control of the elevators, every second he waited was another second that someone might walk down the hall and get suspicious. Just as he was starting to think that the target was going to make do with a change of clothes, or that the hotel was better constructed than they’d banked on, something in the wall creaked, and he heard a rush of water and the faintest pitter-patter of a top of the line rainfall shower. He placed the glass on the carpet by the wall, out of sight unless you actually stepped into the corridor, and waited until he was sure that the target had had enough time to undress. He knocked, once, and then again, firmly so that it would be heard over the sound of the shower.

A few seconds later, the door opened. From here on out, the whole plan rested on Tommy.

“Hi,” Alexai said, in what seemed to be genuine surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you again.” His accent really was flawless.

“I didn’t expect to be seen again”. Tommy smirked, trying to recapture the confidence that had seemed to work yesterday, when there hadn’t been any stakes that he’d been aware of. “But I couldn’t stop thinking about last night.” His eyes fell to Alexai’s arms, checking if he had his watch on. He didn’t, which was remarkably easy to determine, since he was only wearing a towel. Taking the look as Tommy checking him out, Alexai leant against the door and crossed his arms, muscles flexing.

“Yeah?” His tone was disinterested, but Tommy knew he had him. He gazed steadily at the other man. The person who he was tonight wouldn’t ask a second time. “You’d better come in then,” Alexai said after a few moments. He pushed the door open wide, and turned back into the room, giving Tommy a chance to scan visible surfaces for the watch. There. On the desk by the window. Tommy started to drift in that direction, eyes on the view of the city.

“I was about to have a shower,” Alexai said, “would you care to join me?”

Tommy was by the window now, mere inches from his goal. He slipped a hand into his pocket, shoulders loose and relaxed, and his fingers touched the cool metal of the replacement, identical externally, so much more complex internally. He could see Alexai’s reflection in the sheet glass window. He looked eager. Tommy couldn’t help a pang of guilt. He wasn’t that much younger than Tommy, but something about him appeared almost innocent. Of course, he also appeared to be from Wisconsin. Appearances could be deceptive, and Tommy had a greater good to serve. “I had something a bit less wet and more horizontal in mind, but I don’t mind waiting if you want to go ahead.”

Whether it was eagerness or his much neglected countersurveillance training, Alexai didn’t take the bait. “No,” he said, “now you’re here, a shower alone doesn’t really appeal to me.”

Of course. That would have been a bit too easy. Tommy started to formulate another approach in his head. It would be a simple matter to make the swap if he got the opportunity, but if he roused any suspicions, this could still all fall apart.

Miraculously, he didn’t need another approach. Alexai glanced over at the clouds of steam still emanating from the bathroom and said, “Hang on, let me get the water”. In the time it took him to step through the bathroom door and crank the water off, his watch was sliding into Tommy pocket, and the replacement was on the desk. It was almost too easy. He turned around to face Alexai, and braced his hand on the desk chair to hide its adrenaline induced tremor.

“Well aren’t you a sight,” Tommy said, and right on cue, his phone twanged ostentatiously. “I’ll turn this off.” Tommy got his phone out, glanced at the screen, and let his character’s leer slip dramatically off his face. “Fuck,” he said, “it’s my girlfriend. She’s meant to be out of town.” He didn’t apologize. It wouldn’t occur to the guy he was to do that. “I’ll have to take a rain check.”

As Tommy strode past a pissed off looking Alexai, his phone started to ring.

“What the-” said Alexai, but Tommy was already at the door. He answered the call, turned back to make the universal sorry-I’m-on-the-phone mime, and stepped back into the hallway. The door shut behind him with what he hoped, this time, really was a definitive, final, clunk. He stooped to scoop the discarded glass back into his pocket. The fewer loose ends the better. 

“Hi honey,” Tommy said. He knew how thin these walls were. “I’m just on my way home.”

“Hi sugarplum,” Lovett replied, voice light and teasing. “So I hear I’m your girlfriend now?”

Tommy smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/persuna), tagging at length.


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